Robert R. Sokal has taught biometry and related courses for almost half a century at the University of Kansas, at Stony Brook, and abroad. In both his teaching and research, he has promoted the use of statistics in biology. A native of Vienna, Austria, he went to high school and college in Shanghai, China, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in biology at St. John’s University. Graduate studies in zoology at the University of Chicago led to a Ph.D. in 1952. He spent 18 years as a faculty member in Entomology at the University of Kansas, joining the then new department of Ecology and Evolution at Stony Brook in 1968. His research has ranged over a diverse group of topics: quantitative methods in systematics (numerical taxonomy), ecological genetics of laboratory populations, spatial analysis of distributions of organisms and their genes, and in recent years, statistical approaches to problems in physical anthropology. Including translated volumes, he has published 15 books, and over 200 articles. Dr. Sokal was elected President of four international scientific societies and an honorary member of several others. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was also awarded the Charles Darwin Lifetime Achievement Award in Physical Anthropology. Currently, he is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Stony Brook University.